


Signs of Life

by openhearts



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e09 Aliens in a Spaceship, F/M, Headless Witch in the Woods, Two Bodies in the Lab
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-08
Updated: 2009-08-08
Packaged: 2018-08-14 08:01:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8004940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openhearts/pseuds/openhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Originally posted at LiveJournal)</p>
<p>It'd only been a few weeks since they got pulled up out of the ground, and he sat in his study with a fire going in the fireplace, music playing quietly in the background, and a book lying on the floor where he'd thrown it a few minutes before.  His phone slid in a sweaty hand as he dialed.  His throat was dry and his eyes were open too wide.</p>
<p>She answered, and her voice was cloudy with sleep.  She answered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Signs of Life

**Author's Note:**

> The plot bunny for this one came from my last B/B oneshot "Everything There is to Want" and Brennan and Hodgins little "moment."  I may add a second part to this arc, though it's not written yet.  Many, many thanks to [](http://britishwannabe1.livejournal.com/profile)[**britishwannabe1**](http://britishwannabe1.livejournal.com/) and [](http://users.livejournal.com/-missmargaret-/profile)[](http://users.livejournal.com/-missmargaret-/)**_missmargaret_** , my two wonderfully encouraging betas.  
> 

He's running a hand through her hair and it's soft - so, so soft and slipping soundlessly through his fingers and it almost doesn't feel like it should go with her beautiful methodical mind.  He ignores the inclination to reconcile Dr. Brennan with this other, this woman who doesn't seem to have a name who's curled in his lap, tilting her head back for him while he sucks on her throat. 

They don't kiss on the mouth.  The rest of each other's skin they lick and kiss and seal their mouths over and suck to pull blood to the surface to prove it's there and moving.  They feel ribs with lungs underneath moving moving moving - lungs with something to do.  Throats filled with air filled with oxygen filled with yeswe’realive.  But they don't kiss on the mouth and that's how it started, after it _really_ started. 

It'd only been a few weeks since they got pulled up out of the ground, and he sat in his study with a fire going in the fireplace, music playing quietly in the background, and a book lying on the floor where he'd thrown it a few minutes before.  His phone slid in a sweaty hand as he dialed.  His throat was dry and his eyes were open too wide. 

She answered, and her voice was cloudy with sleep.  She answered. 

"Hodgins?" 

"Hey, yeah, it's . . . it's me." 

She answered.  She answered. 

She answered. 

"What is it?" 

He was embarrassed at how shaky his breath sounded over the line.  "I just, I'm sorry.  I couldn't sleep, and I was just thinking about . . . about in the car and . . ." 

He trailed off. 

"Oh," she said softly.  He heard the rustling of what were probably blankets slipping around her legs as she sat up in bed.   

"Are you having flashbacks?"  She asked. 

"I guess.  Not really flashbacks per se, just . . ." Flashbacks was easier.  Just say flashbacks.  "Yeah I guess flashbacks." 

She mm'ed quietly. 

"Listen, I'm sorry, I've obviously woken you up, and I . . . I'm sorry, goodnight."  He hung up before she could say anything else. 

_   
 

The second time he called her it was when they were on a case and he had a thought about a particulate they'd found embedded in the victim's esophagus, so he called her.  At two in the morning this time, because he was still up and working, hunched over his laptop with the music a little louder and the fire burning a little bigger. 

She sounded more awake this time, maybe pulled out of a more shallow sleep.  He shared his finding with her and she - all business at two in the morning in bed talking to him in her cashmere blanket of a voice - agreed that they would look into it tomorrow. 

This time when he said goodnight, she said it back. 

_   
 

"Hello?" 

"Hodgins, it's me.  It's Brennan." 

"Hey - are you okay?" 

It was quiet.  His fingers curled around the phone. 

"I . . ." she sighed. 

"Yeah," he said quietly. 

They'd gone to the funeral that day--- of the particulate-in-the-esophagus victim whose name he didn't want to remember--- stood on the grass and watched the opening in the ground.  Their eyes had caught before she slid her sunglasses on and walked away with Booth's hand at her elbow. 

_   
 

The next time, it's a Friday. 

"Hodgins?" 

"Can I . . . will you come meet me somewhere?  I just, I have to get out and-" 

"Yes.  Where." 

They sat in a diner.  Not the Royal Diner, but something like it.  They had tea and she hunched over her cup, teaspoon dangling from her fingers and dragging back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. 

"Do you feel different?" 

She paused and considered.  Sipped. 

"How so?" 

"I mean, we could have died in that car.  Easily.  We said goodbye.  Doesn't that make you feel something different now than you did before? 

She shrugged.  "I've been in life or death situations before-" 

I know, he thought.   

(I saw you tied and gagged with dogs salivating, waiting to tear you limb from limb in an abandoned warehouse.  I saw you about to be murdered.  I was there.  The smell of the place: dog urine and old blood mixed with cordite from the gun blasts, your shrieks muffled in Booth's shoulder when you fell to the ground after he freed your hands.) 

"-but that's . . . psychology," she finished with a smirk, and he smirked back even though he missed whatever she said in the middle.  It doesn't matter. 

He watched her pull her sweater closer and sip her tea and it all felt way too intimate.  Unwelcome and too detailed, too much to know about someone he had to work with everyday. 

Wet darkness outside the window to his left and her across the table in street clothes - something she had pulled on in the middle of the night to meet him at a diner that was not her and Booth's diner.  A brief part of him felt like an intruder, with her like that. 

"I feel . . . I worry about you," she said, eyes in her cup, now empty.  She was continuing her answer to his question, but this time he listened. 

"I know, I do too." 

"It's not a rational-" She looked at him, face empty.  Full. 

"I know," he said.  "Me too." 

Their hands lied flat on the table.  Their fingers touched. 

_   
 

"It's . . . can we go get a drink or something?  Not tea," she said.  It was the date of a concert she'd made vague plans to attend with Will. 

His breath felt lighter all of a sudden.  Thinner.  Panic and quickening. 

"Come over." 

He gave her directions.  Twenty minutes later she was there. 

He opened the door wider and turned when it closed to see her standing in his foyer.  Jeans and sweater, hair down, boots.  It was raining out again.  There were drops clinging to the fibers.  He led the way to the study and motioned for her to enter ahead.  His fingers brushed over her back. 

_   
 

She sat across from him, round cocktail table squatting between them with a bottle of scotch on it and crystal low balls catching the firelight.  There was music playing.  She hummed with the melody now and then when there was nothing to say.  Her legs were crossed, casual. 

They talked about meaningful things in meaningless ways.  About the house, about Zack.  About Angela, briefly. 

Not about any of it.  They talked so they wouldn't be drinking in silence, finger after finger of very expensive scotch.  It did the job.   

She kicked her shoes off and curled her feet under her on the deep leather club chair.  She gestured with a hand wrapped around the glittering glass.  They laughed here and there.  He got up and turned the music up a little louder.  He got lost on the way back to his chair. 

He stood next to her, glass dangling from one hand while his other touched the curl of hair lying over her shoulder.  She looked up at him, and it was blurry. 

"You're alive," he rasped. 

"Yes," she answered.  Her voice sounded thick, choked. 

Her hand touched the back of his and he pulled her up and dropped his glass to roll over the thick carpet under their bare feet.  They stood face to face, breathing.   

Scotch, fire, music, night.  It all mixed and faded around them.   

His hands curved around her elbows and her fingertips brushed over his biceps up and down, up and down.  He watched the neckline of her shirt move over her flesh, over her ribcage, over her lungs.  Yes.  Air in and out.  Evidence. 

Who started it and who finished it – they were both thinking it.   

And then he's touching her face and her mouth is open on the base of his thumb and their feet are tripping together because he's pulled her in, pulled himself in to the space between the side of her neck and her hair and her fingers dig into his shoulders and rainscotch _her_ and howwillIforgetthisonMonday? and she's breathing and her heart is pumping blood through the veins that are under the skin his mouth is touching and she's alive. 

Alive. 

_   
 

There's a bed in one of the bedrooms downstairs.  There's a bed in a bedroom and it's horizontal and the sheets are clean, and he's sure he can remember how to get there.  He leads her to it, her padding behind him in bare feet, with her fingers wrapped around his.   

He's too afraid to look at her, to look back and realize that it's not her following him because she died two months ago in the car in the hole in the ground in the quarry.  He turns a split second before the door closes behind her and they're left in the dark in the bedroom alone with each other.   

It's her. 

_   
 

He gets them to the bedroom and she gets them to the bed, pushing him back until he sits and she straddles his thighs and he brushes her hair away with both hands and sends kisses in a line from beneath her chin to the little well between her collarbones while her fingers open the buttons on his shirt. 

They wrestle his arms out of the sleeves and the undershirt over his head and then he's on his back with her fingers splaying over his pecs and her forehead pressed to his sternum.  Their hips make small movements together up and back and small circles that make her pant, and his hands make spirals from her shoulder blades to her thighs back up to the sides of her breasts.   

Her breath spreads hot in a little circle on his skin, over and over. 

His hips buck up and the sound she makes is a sigh and a grunt and a whimper as she sits up, fingers dragging down till they slide up over her own hips and she pulls the top over her head.  He leans up, pulling one leg up behind her, and she leans back so her spine drapes convex over his knee.  He traces over the seams of her bra with his tongue and spreads his hands wide over her ribcage to measure the expansion when his teeth scrape her nipple through the material.  It's just a twitch of a breath but it makes him hum with approval over her skin. 

Bra straps come off her shoulders and down her arms and his hips buck again and her head falls back and he thinks that right now he wouldn't kiss her on the mouth even if he could.   

But then she's pushing him to his back again and up on her knees over him and crawling back and his belt clinks, zipper clicks, they both fall apart a little when her mouth is full of him.  Her tongue ripples against the head before she sucks all the way down to the base and he feels the groan in the back of her throat answering the one in his. 

When he's socloseohgodweWORKtogether, he pulls her up and flips them over and there's a moment where she lies underneath him panting and then he really wants to kiss her to taste himself on her tongue.  But- 

"This isn't, um-" 

"It's a connection," she says simply, but with weight.  "We . . . shared an experience that no one else did and it's-" 

"It's just-" he runs a hand over her hair again.  A fingertip slips over her bare shoulder and down her arm. 

He smiles, and she smiles and they breathe the same air.   

"You're _alive_ ," he sighs again, and he leans back on his knees and unbuttons her jeans and slides them down her legs slowly.  He runs his palms up from her ankles to her knees.  He kisses her calf, where she'd drawn a blade very fast and without empathy on his own.  It's a big scar.   

Her legs part under his palms and he licks into the bend behind her knee once before her other ankle slides up to rest over his shoulder.  She's propped up on her elbows, watching him, smile hazy now but there and real.   

He doesn't waste time, just drops a kiss at the northern border of her dark curls before dragging the underside of his tongue down and then back up between the supple folds of her.  He glances up when he has her clit between the tip of his tongue and his front teeth and she's flat on her back with a hand clutched in her hair, mouth open, gasping. 

He murmurs nothing sounds into her as his tongue slides down inside and she murmurs them back. 

_


End file.
